What a Website Can Do about “Thin Content” — 4 Common Scenarios and Solutions

For many ecommerce sites, sites with hundreds of mostly duplicated pages, and others, fixing thin content may seem like an impossible goal. But thin content is the opposite of the unique, relevant quality content that search engines want to show on results pages. Thin content can hurt a website’s SEO and revenue.

What’s the worst that can happen? Websites can incur manual penalties from Google for having “Thin content with little or no added value” (see this Google Help video for Matt Cutts’s explanation and our tutorial on avoiding Google penalties for more detail). Other times, sites may experience sudden drops in organic search traffic as evidence of an algorithmic penalty (usually Panda-related). Either way, penalty actions reduce website traffic and impact the bottom line.

How to Avoid Thin Content

Thin content isn’t about the amount of content, but the quality. Here are general tips for content creation that will keep you clear of Google’s thin content traps.

Make your page the most complete answer: Search for your specific phrases, then look through the “top 100 results” and find the words and phrases related to that topic (e.g., for “John Wayne,” pages might talk about the Oscars, westerns, movies, etc.). Make sure your content includes all the same ideas so you can “get stuck in the cluster.” (Credit: Bill)

Reword to create original content: Don’t copy other people’s content, but reword it. Aggregate all the different answers so that yours is the best result.

Review your content: To evaluate your content, ask “normal people,” because you are too close to it.

Write with related terms, not just keywords: If you are still working with just keywords, “you’re in the Dark Ages.” Content writers need to include all the related terms on a topic. (Credit: Terry)

Analytics are your friend: Do split testing, check conversions, and look at traffic counts, since these are more important than search engine rankings. (Credit: David)

Do keyword research: Use keyword research tools to find what people are searching for but keep in mind that search volumes may not be accurate. High volume terms are “expensive to achieve” and have low conversion rates. The kind of people who search for short-tail (high volume) terms are generally not very savvy Internet users; this could be a way to segment your audience, but consider whether those are the people you want to reach. (Credit: Ammon and David)

Use other data sources, too: Use other data sources such as government sites, census figures, and even your past sales data to help you craft unique content. (Credit: Carlos)

“Make Google stupid for not showing your result in the top three or four spots.” – Carlos Fernandes

Thin Content Scenario #1 – Boilerplate Location Pages

Websites wanting to do business in many different cities often set up “location pages” to help them rank for location-based searches. When these are created using a boilerplate template with just a “fill-in-the-blank” approach to change the place names, the same content gets duplicated across hundreds or thousands of pages. And that’s the kind of “thin content” Google’s Panda algorithm seeks to eliminate.

Location pages are identical except for one or two words, so they’re thin content.

There’s contention even among experts over whether there’s a reason to ever have pages for different locations anymore.

A case could be made that “Anybody who tries to do location pages now is just an idiot … They got Google Local for a reason.” – Terry Van Horne

Adversely, it could be argued that location-specific content is a value add. Carlos reported that having region-specific pages on his website had brought him a $352 million inquiry just that week.

“Location pages ARE still needed. There are a lot of times when a national provider is going to be excluded from local results because … what Google cares about is [giving] the best results matching their algorithm and that the user is satisfied [not necessarily giving the truly best results].” – Ammon Johns

Ultimately, location pages may have value to online marketers depending on user intent. Why would it be important enough for users to specify a location in their search? Reasons could be:

They want a local office where they can talk face-to-face.

They want to stay within a fixed radius.

They want someone who understands special local issues (e.g., getting homeowner’s insurance if you live in tornado alley).

HOW TO FIX LOCATION PAGES

If you understand the user’s intent, then you can add some unique content to each location page that meets the user’s specific needs. Try these recommendations for your geo-targeted content:

Add text that shows you know something about the location. Example: For a construction company that works in many different counties, location pages could explain the different zoning codes, historical development, how building at the beach differs from inland construction, names of districts in the area, etc. (Credit: Bill)

Add regional statistics. Some websites bring in data by feeds from Wolfram Alpha that are specific for each region and appropriate to the subject. (Credit: Carlos)

Have local experts add content. The site can be a framework, and local subject matter experts can help create the content. Example: Lawyer sites might have pages about drunk driving charges, and that content can vary from state to state (e.g., laws, penalties, even what the charge is called). Lawyers in each state know the subject well, so have them create location-specific content.

Put duplicated content in an iframe. If there’s content that has to be on every location page, put it into an iframe and have original, tailored content around it. Iframes get around the duplicate content problem; search engines see the iframe as a separate page that’s relevant to all the other pages (sort of like a “mid-page canonical”). (Credit: Carlos and Ammon)

Get quotes from local people. Adding quotes, recommendations, etc., written by people who live in each local area. In this instance, a business probably has customers in each region, so their content would “give localized social proof” that would help with conversions. (Credit: Carlos and Ammon)

Refer to past sales data. If a particular product has sold well in a specific area, talk about that product on that location page.

Include links to relevant external sites. Adding a few links pointing to local sites that might be valuable for the user (e.g., the local chamber of commerce) can “help legitimize your post in Google’s eyes,” David said. A few external citations can show that you know the local market and you’ve put some thought into creating unique content for that location. As Terry observed, “Google has always rewarded linking out to good resources.”

“The next best thing to having a link from a big, powerful, authority site is putting a link to a big, powerful, authority site.” – Ammon Johns

Consider taking your location pages down. If you can’t make each page different with location-specific unique content that fulfills the searcher’s intent, it would be better from an SEO perspective not to have location pages at all.

Thin Content Scenario #2: Filtered Ecommerce Pages

On an ecommerce site, users can view pages with filtered results, such as by brand, by size, by product type, or by other attributes. These “filtered results” pages have a unique URL that can be indexed by the search engines. The problem is, since none of the content is unique on those pages, they create a nightmare of duplicate, thin content. In a worst case scenario, a site with only 3,000 products may have 40,000 pages indexed, which makes no sense. Google can and will penalize ecommerce sites for this situation. But should you struggle with making those pages unique? Most sites do not need to rank for product attributes, and having so many filtered pages dilutes the site’s internal link equity anyway.

HOW TO FIX FILTERED RESULTS PAGES

Again, the goal is to put some unique content on every page that will be indexed for search. Barring that, the other choice is to prevent non-unique pages from being indexed at all.

Add content based on filters and keep the pages indexed. If you can insert some unique content that specifically relates to the filter, the page may be okay to keep in the search index. Adding two or three sentences above the filtered product information could work. This can be difficult to program into your shopping cart software, but some products will allow it. (Credit: Carlos)

Use the URL Parameter tool. In Google Webmaster Tools, the URL Parameter tool lets you tell Google how to handle URLs containing specific parameters (see GWT Help for more details).

Remove filtered results pages from the search engine index. If you cannot add any unique content, then remove the pages from the search index. One way to do so is using the Page Removal tool in Google Webmaster Tools.

Block indexing using robots.txt. Another way to prevent duplicate content pages is to exclude them in your robots.txt file (see our Robots.txt guide for help). This stops the search engine from indexing your filtered results pages.

Thin Content Scenario #3: Product Pages

Ecommerce product pages commonly have two problems that cause thin content: duplicated manufacturer descriptions and repeated text for terms of service and shipping information.

Many ecommerce sites take boilerplate, manufacturer-provided text and paste it into their product pages. Manufacturer product descriptions can be found all over the web, so these duplicate product pages can trigger search engine penalties. It’s also problematic when lengthy blocks of text for terms of service and shipping information are repeated across all product pages.

HOW TO FIX PRODUCT PAGES

For this problem, there is only one solution: make original content for each product page. This can be a monumental task for sites with thousands of products, but necessary.

Rewrite pages in priority order. It’s advised that sites start with their most important products first (i.e., the ones making them money) and begin creating unique content for each product. (Credit: David)

Make sure repeated text doesn’t overwhelm original content. Terms of service, shipping information, and similar text can be 400 to 500 words, which is a large percentage of the body copy. Be careful to “flesh out” the product information enough so that there’s original content to balance out the duplicated text.

Evaluate your content. Here are some questions to help guide the rewriting process: 1) Is this content going to be the same as everyone else’s? 2) Is it original? 3) Is there enough content here to be worth saying? (Credit: Ammon)

Thin Content Scenario #4: “Me too” SEO Posts

There’s a type of content that has become commonplace on the web today: “me too” blog posts, which may be 2000-word articles about things people have already read elsewhere. These posts are not true curations because they have no added value and nothing original. While you might think “thin content” means not enough words, that’s incorrect; long posts can be considered “thin,” too.

HOW TO FIX “ME TOO” POSTS

Curate content, don’t duplicate it. Curate content by synthesizing ideas and adding original thoughts. Read more about SEO best practices for content curation (make sure to use unique text, high quality links, and add value) if you’re cleaning up “me too” thin content.

Don’t just copy and paste. Duplicate content adds no value for the reader and could be penalized by the search engines. Don’t do it.

In the end, correcting and avoiding thin content comes down to one question:

“If you can’t do better than the results that are already there, why bother?” – Ammon Johns

The ISOOSI Chat happens every Tuesday at 12:00 Pacific time on Google+. All are welcome.

About the Author

Paula Allen has worked as senior technical writer at Bruce Clay, Inc. since 2008.
An English teacher at heart, Paula enjoys working in a room where grammar is frequently discussed and in an industry where there's always more to learn. See her author page for links to connect with Paula on social media.

11 responses to “What a Website Can Do about “Thin Content” — 4 Common Scenarios and Solutions”

Wow, what a fantastic job of covering that hangout! This is an awesome write-up, and a perfect example of curation with a ton of added value. Thanks so much in covering this and helping to spread the message, Paula.

Ammon Johns: We were happy to extract and share the many actionable tips you discussed. As a side note, the ISOOSI Tuesday Chat was the top-rated Google+ Hangout our readers recommended we attend when our managing editor, Virginia Nussey, recently took a poll. We were not disappointed! The chat covered a ton of practical, excellent information.

That’s fantastic to know, Paula, so thank you, and thanks to your readers. Our regular ISOOSI Tuesday chats have been incredibly fun to do, and we’ve been blessed with a lot of awesome guests. I was saying to Virginia Nussey on G+ that its sometimes hard not to feel almost guilty about the hangouts – as if anything that much fun can’t possibly be real work and I must be goofing around.

Great work Paula!
Almost everything is covered regarding thin content (as per your initial advice to avoid Panda). One question I want to put here; can all Panda penalty be reversible? Specially when a very big site got this due to thin content issue. I happened to find opportunity to analyze two big sites (one used to get more than 130000 visits/day & other get 65000 visits/day before the penalty in 2011). first one is just a directory like site and other has all most 50000 pages full of thin content but original one. After so many falls promises from other SEOs to solve the issue and predictable results, they came to me for analysis and I sincerely told them though the penalty can’t be withdrawn fully to get back the previous position, but to certain extent part of the traffic can be regained.

I don’t know whether expert SEOs will agree with me or not but I feel in some peculiar cases, Panda can’t be reversible. I feel Panda reflects the shifting attitude of Google towards assigning quality tag for ranking purposes and due to this changes, certain sites those used to get top ranking just for the sake of their size and popularity have seen the dropdown. I don’t know to what extent I’m right. Just feel like that.

I’ve a similar post on Panda issue in my blog http://www.suvaance.com/search-engine-optimization-2014-part-learning-panda-updates-2013/. If you could have a look and give your valuable suggestion, it’ll be a great help for me. Thanks in advance.

This post helps in dissecting and doing away with thin contents. The common scenarios dissected affects relatively many websites today. Well, the practicality of the solutions offered here is impressive. Its time to apply the procedures recommended for each!

This comment was left in kingged.com – the content syndication and content aggregation website where this post was bookmarked.

Dillip: In our experience, a website can recover from Panda. However, it typically means that a lot of work is involved, and not every site owner is up for the challenge. Our recommendations generally include consolidating thin content pages, writing new content that is relevant to the theme(s) of the website, and revising pages. It’s definitely not a simple process. Plus, there’s no guarantee that the website will rank as high as it did before being hit by Panda. Adding to your point, we have questioned whether sites following Panda have a real reason to exist and if there might need to be a change in the business model. For example, if the site was a directory with very little original content, it’s going to have a hard time ranking in today’s Google. Changing how the site functions, such as adding user-generated content may be necessary, especially if it’s impossible for the site to write relevant content for all pages.

I was always taught that content is king so I added as much content as I could to my sites no matter if it was good or bad. I soon realized however that content has to be quality over quantity and I never looked back after that.

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